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DOUBLETHINK MEANS THE POWER OF HOLDING TWO CONTRADICTORY BELIEFS IN ONE’S MIND SIMULTANEOUSLY, AND ACCEPTING BOTH OF THEM.… WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE. WHO CONTROLS THE PRESENT CONTROLS THE PAST. —GEORGE ORWELL

ISRAEL SHIFTS ON BORDERS AS U.N. VOTE LOOMS
Joshua Mitnick

Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2011

 

Israel signaled it was willing to negotiate with the Palestinians based on the 1967 border of the West Bank, injecting a potentially significant territorial concession into discussions aimed at restarting peace talks.

Such a position would mark a reversal for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who during a White House visit in May publicly and forcefully rejected President Barack Obama’s call for a peace deal based on 1967 borders and modified by mutual land swaps.

A senior Palestinian official called the offer “a joke.” U.S. officials said they saw it as political posturing intended to pressure the Palestinians to abandon a campaign to win recognition at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Israel and the U.S. see progress on peace as a way to possibly avert a U.N. vote. They have held discussions with the Palestinians in recent months to agree on a set of parameters on which to start peace talks. Israeli President Shimon Peres has met on behalf of Mr. Netanyahu with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other top Palestinian negotiators.

An Israeli official, describing the offer in careful terms, said Mr. Netanyahu could begin negotiations on borders based on a formula “similar to the language used in Obama’s speeches,” but added that the Israeli leader wouldn’t explicitly endorse the U.S. position on the 1967 line. Such a position would destabilize his…coalition.

Mr. Netanyahu insists that a negotiated solution on a border must reroute the Green Line, the border that marked the West Bank before Israel captured it from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, to include blocs of Israeli settlements built since 1967, and take into consideration Israeli national security.

Israel would also demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state as part of the package, the official said. The Palestinians have rejected this.… “It’s a joke,” said Nabil Shaath, a senior official in Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Abbas. “There is nothing serious that Mr. Netanyahu has offered. The word 1967 has become utterly meaningless. It means that we start from 1967 but we never go back to it.”

A senior U.S. official expressed skepticism that the Israeli position will spur a breakthrough, saying Mr. Netanyahu’s statements in recent days look more like “positioning” than an aggressive move to ignite the peace process.… During Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, he called the 1967 lines “indefensible.…”

For Israel, agreeing to the 1967 line would mean recognizing that most Jewish settlements in the West Bank would be part of a future Palestinian state. During an address to Congress in May, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged that some of the settlements would be part of a Palestinian state.

Danny Danon, a member of…Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, predicted the prime minister would lose the support of hard-line allies if he agreed to Mr. Obama’s formula.… A former adviser predicted Mr. Netanyahu wouldn’t break with the right, as he did when he made territorial concessions to the Palestinians in 1998 at a peace summit in the U.S. Some analysts say that move led to his defeat at the polls the following year.…

 

ISRAEL BOWS TO OBAMA’S 1967 BORDERS PRESSURE
P. David Hornik

FrontPage, August 3, 2011

 

Media reports quote anonymous Israeli officials saying Israel has decided, after all, to negotiate a two-state arrangement with the Palestinians based on the 1967 borders. The reports have a certain shock value; reading between the lines, the shock dissipates somewhat.

APcalls it a “dramatic policy shift” and cites a report on Israel’s Channel 2 TV that said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is now “basically accepting the framework” of the 1967 lines, broached by President Obama…last May.… AP quotes [an Israeli] official: “We are willing in a framework of restarting the peace talks to accept a proposal that would contain elements that would be difficult for Israel and we would find very difficult to endorse.” AP continues: “Part of the reason, he said, was that Israel is seeking to persuade the Palestinians to drop their initiative to win UN recognition of their state next month….”

As for AFP (Agence France-Presse), its report has an Israeli official saying that “Israel has been working with Washington and members of the international peace-making Quartet [the U.S., UN, EU, and Russia] to draw up a new framework that could relaunch stalled talks.…” This official…tells AFP that…“The formulation is something like: the goal for the talks is two states for two people and [the Palestinians] recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.”

Britain’s Daily Telegraph claims it, too, has been tipped off, trumpeting that “the Israeli prime minister has bowed to U.S. pressure by agreeing for the first time that a Palestinian state should roughly follow the contours of the 1967 ceasefire lines separating the West Bank from Israel.…”

The first two reports also quote Palestinian reactions to the alleged major Israeli concession; to put it mildly, they don’t sound impressed. AP narrates that “Palestinian officials said they had not received such a proposal from Israel”—that is, to drop their UN initiative in return for Israel adopting different language on borders.… Palestinian officials said Monday they plan to begin mass marches against Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank on Sept. 20, the eve of the UN vote.… AFP quotes Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat urging Netanyahu to “announce his position in front of the world and the international media”…[while] dismissing the reports as a PR exercise.

Indeed, the Jerusalem Post reports Netanyahu as having “expressed pessimism” to the Israeli cabinet “about returning to talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying he seems to be determined to bring Palestinian statehood recognition to a UN vote in September.” Hence, Netanyahu said, Israel was “working to ensure a US veto in the UN Security Council.…”

[This] statement should put all of the above in perspective.

In other words, while the U.S. administration has expressed opposition to the Palestinian push to get a state declared unilaterally at the UN, and while it has been speculated or even assumed that the U.S. would veto such a proposal in the Security Council, the U.S. has never come out and confirmed this.

Such ongoing reluctance regarding a veto should surprise no one. When last February the Obama administration vetoed a Palestinian-inspired Security Council resolution to declare all Israeli communities in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and parts of Jerusalem “illegal,” UN Ambassador Susan Rice compensated the Palestinians by tarring all such communities as “illegitimate,” deploying some of the harshest and most abusive language against Israel ever used by the U.S.

The result, then, is that Israel is still in limbo and under a lot of pressure, leading it to signal a certain—though not total, and hedged with important conditions—capitulation to Obama.

Who, for his part, appears to remain stuck in his grim obsession with Palestinian statehood despite the Palestinians’: continuing systematic anti-Israeli incitement and glorification of terrorism; contemptuous refusal, now extending over two years, to negotiate with Israel; staunch negation of its right to exist as a Jewish state; and not-so-veiled threats of further violence.…

 

OBAMA’S CURIOUS INTERPRETATION
OF INTERNATIONAL BORDERS
Seth Mandel

Contentions, August 2, 2011

 

The Associated Press touched off a round of Knesset-ology yesterday when it reported, based on an Israeli TV report, Benjamin Netanyahu “has agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire line that marks off the West Bank.” The story termed this a “dramatic policy shift.”

Was Netanyahu now capitulating to President Obama’s declaration that negotiations start at the 1949 armistice lines? Did something change? Unfortunately, the subsequent articles in the Israeli and American press weren’t much help. Both sides are being vague about what it actually means, but it’s all based on one question: whether the 1949 armistice lines (also referred to as the 1967 lines) should be treated as though they constitute an international border. Curiously, however, we were given a reminder this week of an actual international border where U.S. assets have been attacked and its clear boundary recognition ignored. Yet the president, far from giving a national speech hectoring the leader of that country (as he did to Netanyahu) seems unmoved.

Last week, Eli Lake reported U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed a previous claim by Georgia that a bomb blast at the American embassy in Tbilisi last year was carried out by the Russian military. “It is written without hedges, and it confirms the Georgian account,” an American official told Lake.

In a follow-up, Lake reported the Russian intelligence (GRU) officer suspected, Maj. Yevgeny Borisov, remains at his post in the Georgian province of Abkhazia—a clear swipe at American officials’ concern.… Normally, intelligence officers who are exposed by another government are recalled home and their careers are cut short.”

In today’s edition of the New York Times, Ellen Barry received a response from Russia’s foreign ministry to Friday’s Senate resolution describing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “occupied by the Russian Federation.” The statement was utterly dismissive of the U.S. government’s right to declare borders in Russia/Georgia: “The statement of the American senators about this testifies either to illiteracy of international law, or else complete disregard for the real facts.…”

The Russian line is since it declared South Ossetia and Abkhazia to be its possession, the matter is solved. The U.S. has not fought the Russians on this, because we’re trying to get their cooperation on other matters. It is interesting to see—whether or not you agree with the president’s position on either issue—the difference in the way the administration practices statecraft with regard to Russia and Israel.

Russia invaded another country’s sovereign territory, crossing international borders and refusing to give up their claim to land inside Georgia. Our response is not to challenge them on it. Israel, however, is quite clearly our ally with whom we have a great relationship that benefits our national interests in the Middle East. The White House’s response is to browbeat Netanyahu into recognizing lines that are explicitly not international borders to bring him in line with the president’s disregard for Israelis living on the other side. It’s quite a contrast.

 

LAND FOR WAR
Efraim Karsh & Asaf Romirowsky

Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2011

 

As September approaches, many are waiting with bated breath to learn if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver on his threat to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state and seek recognition of it through the U.N. But in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization’s longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict—U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—with unpredictable results.

Passed in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, resolution 242 established the principle of “land for peace” as the cornerstone of future peace agreements between Israel and the Arabs, to be reached in negotiations between the two sides. Israel was asked to withdraw “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”—the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

The absence of the definite article “the” before “territories” was no accident: Issued a mere six months after Israel’s astounding triumph over the concerted Arab attempt to obliterate the Jewish state, the resolution reflected acceptance by the Security Council of the existential threat posed by the 1949 armistice line, memorably described by Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban as “Auschwitz borders.” The Security Council expected negotiations between Israel and the Arabs to produce a more defensible frontier for Israel, one consistent with, in the words of the resolution’s other key formulation, the right of every state in the region “to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries.”

In the 44 years that have followed, Israel has persistently striven to make peace with its Arab neighbors. It withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, constituting more than 90% of the territories occupied in 1967, as part of its 1979 peace agreement with Egypt. Repeated efforts to persuade Syrian President Hafez Assad to follow in Egypt’s footsteps came to naught, however.

As for the Palestinians, their rejection of resolution 242 was absolute. In 1967, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected the U.N. proposal as a plot “concocted in the corridors of the United Nations to accord [with] the Zionist racist colonial illegal occupation in Palestine,” acceptance of which constituted “a treasonable act not only against the Palestinian people but against the whole Arab nation.” When the Carter administration informed Arafat of its readiness to inaugurate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, should he accept resolution 242, the PLO chairman categorically turned the offer down. “This is a lousy deal,” he told an intermediary. “We want Palestine. We don’t want bits of Palestine.”

It was not until 1988, more than two decades after the resolution’s passage, that the Palestine National Congress grudgingly accepted resolution 242. While this marked a major shift in PLO public diplomacy, Arafat remained committed to the PLO’s phased strategy of June 1974, which stipulated that any territory gained through diplomacy would merely be a springboard for the “complete liberation of Palestine.” Shortly after the PLO accepted 242, Arafat’s second in command, Salah Khalaf (better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Iyad), declared that “the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine is but a step toward the whole of Palestine.” Two years later, he reiterated this view at a public rally in Amman, pledging to liberate Palestine “inch by inch from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river.”

Arafat remained committed to the PLO’s phased strategy even after signing the 1993 Oslo Accords. Five days before the signing, he told an Israeli journalist that one day there would be a “united state in which Israelis and Palestinians will live together”—that is, Israel would cease to exist. Even as he shook Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn, Arafat was assuring the Palestinians in a pre-recorded Arabic-language message that the agreement was merely an implementation of the PLO’s phased strategy.

The public diplomacy of Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, also ran contrary to the letter and spirit of 242. The Palestinians have consistently misrepresented the resolution as calling for Israel’s complete withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines, while claiming that its stipulation for “a just settlement of the refugee problem” meant endorsement of the Palestinian “right of return”—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel’s destruction through demographic subversion. They also sought to undermine the resolution’s insistence on the need for a negotiated settlement, seeking time and again to engineer an internationally imposed dictate despite their commitment to a negotiated settlement through the Oslo process.

When Israel offered at the American-convened July 2000 peace summit in Camp David to cede virtually the entire territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state and made concessions with respect to Jerusalem, Arafat responded with a campaign of terror unmatched in the history of the Jewish state. Seven-and-a-half years later, at yet another U.S.-sponsored summit, Mr. Abbas rejected Israel’s offer of a Palestinian Arab state in 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, and categorically dismissed the request to recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the would-be Palestinian state, insisting instead on full implementation of the “right of return.”

Since the inauguration of the Obama administration, Mr. Abbas has dropped all remaining pretenses of seeking a negotiated settlement, striving instead to engineer international enforcement of a complete Israeli withdrawal without a peace agreement, or, indeed, any quid pro quo. Were the U.N. General Assembly to fall for the Palestinian ploy, it will not only reward decades of duplicity, intransigence, and violence and betray its own formula of “land for peace,” but will be introducing a new and dangerous stage in the century-long feud between Arabs and Jews: that of “land for war.”

(Mr. Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum [Philadelphia] and professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King’s College London. Mr. Romirowsky is adjunct scholar at the Middle East Forum and a doctoral student at King’s College London.)

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